Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

How to Train your Employees

Picture this: you are the branch manager of a consultancy
firm which is struggling to meet the demands of the clients. Head office
reassures you that you have enough manpower to cope. The problem is your staff
are unprofessional, lazy and often waste the day browsing the internet for
possible holiday destinations or stalking their exes on Facebook. Unfortunately
due to strict employment laws it is difficult to simply fire them and instead
employ talented and driven university students, from let’s say Warwick
University. So you begin to consider how you could influence your staff to
exhibit more desirable behaviour (completing their work to a high standard
efficiently) and reduce undesirable behaviour (Facebook browsing). The answer:
Applied Behaviour Analysis.

So let’s start with how you could try to increase desired
behaviour. Positive reinforcement is a vital instrument- you need to praise or
reward staff when they do produce high quality reports within an appropriate
timescale. This can be done by verbal praise (from you as the manager), social
recognition (employee of the month) or financial reward (a pay-for-performance
or bonus system). Sears Department Store offered their staff a bonus on their monthly
pay check for every customer credit card application they processed and this
worked to increase the number application completed (because the staff we more
motivated to encourage customers to set up an account). A meta-analysis of a
large body of previous research found a consistent connection between the
implementation of a pay-for-performance method and improved performance (Locke
et al. 1980). Either of these types of financial rewards may be appropriate
within your company. The crucial aspect of positive reinforcement is that it
has to be sufficiently rewarding to the individual to result in behaviour
change so therefore it may be worth consulting with your employees to gauge
what type of reward they would value more.

Although hopefully if the positive reinforcement is
successful your staff should have less time to waste on the internet it might
be beneficial to target reducing this undesirable behaviour. I would suggest
using reprimanding and response cost to do this.

Reprimanding means providing expressions of disproval- so
you as the manager would tell off the member of staff for spending their time
on non-work related websites and may even issue them with a warning
(highlighting that their behaviour could result in disciplinary actions). If
their online activity did result in disciplinary action (e.g. demotion or
dismissal) this would be an example of a response cost. According to Greer and
Labig (1987), who surveyed over a hundred firms, employees agree that fair
reprimands are important within an organisation to encourage a professional
work ethic.

I have lightly touched on some key techniques available
to improve the performance of employees and reduce their internet habits- but
only by trying them out within the specific organisation will you really know
how effective they can be.